


the fire, and what grew after

by cohobbitation



Series: now you have to live with it [3]
Category: Watchmen
Genre: Blair Roche lives, Domestic, Gen, M/M, parentfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 15:46:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17831480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cohobbitation/pseuds/cohobbitation
Summary: Things changed with the Roche case. They had to. How do you go about being the same as before when your partner shows up in the watery dawn, reeking of smoke and covered in blood and shaking?How are they the same when he turns up with a child on his hip?Four years later, Dan dares let out the breath he’s been holding. Things are, impossibly, better than they ever have been.





	the fire, and what grew after

She’s at the head of the pack, six or eight boys half her size nipping and licking at her heels. She’s feral, flawless, wicked bold in the autumn sunlight.

Dan glances forward to the little figure in the trench coat standing about five feet apart and in front of him. All he can see is the back of Rorschach’s head, but his body language might as well be as obvious as semaphore. He’s taut as a greyhound at the gate, running a hand over and over again through his red hair.

Dan has seen them up at night, Rorschach and her, roaring back and forth in their black staticky tongue, trying to convey the unspeakable. He’s seen them squirreled away in random pockets of time, flowing through the motions of how to land a punch or twist a knife like multiplication tables. He’s seen them, two beasts of the same kind, fighting tooth and claw, trying to understand how to go forward in an unjust world.

There are some nights when she wakes screaming down the hall. There are other nights where Rorschach wakes screaming in their bed. 

But here, she’s indomitable, howling down the green after the ball like a pint sized valkyrie, her army of loyal warriors spurred to boldness behind her.

Here, he’s a small man with hollow cheekbones and ears that stick out into the next county, scoring her strikes and her triumphs with a fervency that blots out night terrors and newspaper headlines and the rest of the world.

The cavalcade turns, and she catches sight of them. Immediately all thought of soccer is forgotten, and she breaks formation and sprints toward them.

“Walt! WALT! Uncle Walt!” 

One moment she’s half the field away; a blink later it’s impact in t-minus ten seconds. Rorschach is out front; she vaults and clears the stratosphere, straight into his arms. He grunts, catches her, and nearly falls flat on his back.

At the great old age of nearly eleven, Blair Roche is already four inches short of matching his height.

Dan starts giggling. He can’t help it; by the time he tucks his pencil and his birdwatching manual away he’s almost in tears with it. He has to pry off his glasses to dry his face.

And then, still wheezing happily, he saunters forward to disentangle his husband and their daughter.


End file.
